How The Persecutions Grows Over The Years

[pt_tangles]

Ten years back when I was first starting down a Pagan path, one of the more popular pieces of our history revolved around the idea that 9 million women/Witches were burned at the stake during the burning times.

Over the years this number has been refined through common sense and proper research. If I recall correctly, most estimates put the number of deaths at somewhere around 50,000 people (men, women, children - few, if any, of them witches) killed (some burned, some hanged, some beheaded) over roughly 300 years (which breaks down to about 167 some odd people each year ... this is still a lot of innocent people).

Boy, was I surprised to find out that there had apparently been some sort of disturbance in space and time, and that a large portion of the world's population at the time were actually burned at the stake. Entire countries would have been depopulated to nothing at all. Cultures and races lost forever. The Church was on a serious rampage to take out most of the people alive for hundreds of years.

"Pagans, (including Witches) *never* worshipped the Devil we were falsely accused of worshipping. It is deeply saddening that people still think -800 years after the church started burning my people (Unoficially **Twenty million** Pagans were put to death), that we are evil - when in fact Pagans honour Mother Earth, our Gods and Goddesses, Angels, other loving spirit guides and the Universe (Whom some believe is God)."

For perspective, 20,000,000 Pagans over that same time period is 66,667 every year or 183 Pagans every day.  Busy busy folks, those Inquisitors.  Comments are fun -

http://www.wildhunt.org/2008/01/snubbed-canadian-queen-comes-out-of.html

Oh, and a minor rant on how boycotting the city of Toronto is NOT the way to fix this problem:  If Pagans boycotted US cities every time their city governance did something stupid, there would be no more Pagans in the States at all anymore.  :P

--Phae 

Comments

[mythworker.livejournal.com]

*SIGH*

You know, I never thought a post about a snubbed beauty queen would draw out burning times comparisons. The mind boggles.

[lupagreenwolf.livejournal.com]

Pagans are creative people. Unfortunately, being creative and knowing how to funnel that creativity are occasionally mutually exclusive.

[pt_tangles]

LOL - Every time I see a collective freak out over something like this it makes me wonder where these people have been for the last 30 years. It isn't like this time is any different than any other time.

It would be nice to have a standard response to this sort of discrimination. Then all people would need to say is, "This is who you write to to voice your opinions."

--Phae

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

The most useful suggestion I have seen is for people to write letters to the specific companies sponsoring the beauty pageant in question, informing them that one will be boycotting their products and services as long as they continue to be associated with that particular pageant. That confines the effect to the pageant and its immediate sponsors, and is likely to be the quickest way to get results.

The inaccurate references to the "TEH BURNING TYMZ!!!OMGWTFBBQ!!11!!" are, I'm afraid, par for the course, and may in fact turn out to be witchcraft's version of Godwin's Law.

[pt_tangles]

I saw your thread on NFP. I absolutely agree.

--Phae

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

In point of fact, it was writing my first post here in this thread which caused me to actually decide to restate Godwin's Law in Pagan terms.

So the responsibility for that whole long thread at NFP is in some small part yours as well.